1. Field
The present invention generally relates to electronic design automation. More specifically, the present invention relates to methods and apparatuses for determining a photolithography process model based on compact Abbe's kernel generation using principal component analysis.
2. Related Art
Rapid advances in computing technology can largely be attributed to improvements in semiconductor manufacturing technologies which have made it possible to integrate tens of millions of devices onto a single chip.
Photolithography, which can delineate patterns by exposing light onto a photoresist-coated wafer, is an important process in industrial integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing. Photolithography process models are commonly used to model photolithography processes. A process model can be used in a number of applications during the design of a semiconductor chip. For example, photolithography process models are commonly used for making corrections to layouts to compensate for undesirable effects of semiconductor manufacturing processes.
It is desirable to reduce the time it takes to generate a photolithography model, to improve the performance of the photolithography process model, and to improve the accuracy of the photolithography model. In general, there is a trade-off between accuracy and performance. Specifically, increasing the accuracy of a process model usually increases the time it takes to generate the process model, and also increases the time it takes to use the process model (e.g., increases the convolution time).